


Lilies, For Our Father

by HereComeDatBoi



Series: you're the one that's making me strong [15]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Adam is a good brother-in-law, Gen, M/M, Married Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Rip Shiro, basically Kuron didn't die y'all, but He Thought Wrong, he ended up in one of the 173927 other clone bodies and now he's just chilling with his husband, he still misses his bro though, he thought he was getting peace after the war, though that's not really a focus this time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-30 02:27:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19843666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HereComeDatBoi/pseuds/HereComeDatBoi
Summary: “You’re Adam, aren’t you? Shiro’s Adam?”“Yes, but who—who are you?” Adam clutched the sides of his seat as the doppelganger drew closer, wishing more than anything that he were safe at home in his bed. “You’re not Takashi. Unless you are? Is this an alternate reality? I’ve never jumped realities before, how am I going to getback—”“I mean, it could be?” said the Takashi lookalike, dropping his bags and squinting at Adam’s left ring finger. “I doubt that you’d have the same engagement ring in an alternate reality, though. My team met one of Shiro’s alternate selves once, and the two of them were nothing alike.”Adam blinked. “Have we met?”“Not...exactly?” ventured the doppelganger. “It’s kind of a long story.”





	Lilies, For Our Father

**Author's Note:**

> this is all adashi-time's fault but I liked the idea so *dabs*
> 
> i have never dabbed in real life but typing it out is oddly satisfying and it is also 2 am 
> 
> im sorry guys y'all didn't sign up for this

Strange dreams were a nightly occurrence for Adam, after the war. 

Since leaving the Atlas, his soul had taken a dislike to sticking inside his flesh-and-blood body for long, and sometimes just drifted off into space while he was asleep before being yanked back to the present when he woke. It was an odd thing to get used to, but it wasn’t as if he had a choice; his soul didn’t seem to recognize physical boundaries at all. He had even visited his twenty-three-year-old self once, not long before Himeko was born—apparently, pure spiritual quintessence didn’t care much for the laws of time, either. 

_Point taken, spirit,_ he thought wryly, the night he woke up on the floor of Takashi’s bedroom in the long-since destroyed Castle of Lions. _You’re connected to the whole of this universe now, so you just do whatever you want._ But he was always back to normal by morning, whether he had spent his sleeping hours watching a young Keith playing hopscotch with his father or, more commonly, somewhere in Takashi’s mind shifting uncertainly between images of his parents and grandparents. 

It never happened while he was conscious save during those few brief moments when the soul-bond flared up and sent him into Takashi’s body, whereupon he always found Takashi himself looking back at him through honey-brown eyes and long lashes. 

“Your eyesight’s really bad, love,” Takashi had said the second time it happened, squinting at Adam’s dark hands and then up towards Adam’s signature frown on his own smooth white forehead. “I’d be bumping into things every other minute like this. Are you sure you don’t want that Lasik package the Garrison offered?”

“Yes, and yes,” sighed Adam. “It’s just as good as yours when I’m wearing glasses, moonlight. Now go back to sleep so we can go back to our own bodies, I’m not used to carrying your weight.”

But tonight his visions had taken him somewhere utterly foreign, and yet somehow utterly real—the faces of the alien passersby (Alteans, Galra, a handful of Olkari, and several more peoples he could not recognize) were clear and defined as if they had come out of a photograph, rather than vague and shifting like they usually were in dreams. 

“Did Takashi visit here while he lived on the Castle?” he wondered aloud, deciding that he must have landed in some sort of shopping complex. “Maybe this is a space mall or something.”

Adam sat down on a bench and put his chin in his hands, looking idly from window to window in search of Keith’s red jacket or Katie’s fluffy hair, or even the dull grey metal of Takashi’s first prosthetic. They all had to be here somewhere, he supposed; from what Lance had told him, the team rarely split up at all until Keith left the Castle of Lions to train with the Blades. But if this was still during the war, then—

“Is this before the war even _started?_ ” he muttered. None of the Galra walking past were wearing the old sigil of Zarkon’s empire, and none of the Alteans seemed the slightest bit afraid of them. There were even mixed families in the crowd, he realized; one of the Galra women sitting opposite him was holding a small lilac-skinned toddler with green eyes and twinkling Altean marks flashing in and out of sight like summer fireflies. A second glance proved that some of the Alteans were wearing _Allura’s_ state crest, and Adam sat back and wondered if his quintessence had finally lost it. 

_I’m not connected to anyone here,_ he thought, pinching his wrist with his fingernails in an effort to wake himself up. _Maybe this_ is _just a dream._

“What about the Earth store, _ameen?_ ”

“Just because my brother was from Earth doesn’t mean I know anything about the place,” came a reproving voice from somewhere over Adam’s shoulder. “And Ren wants a welding set, not a gaming console, so we’d be better off looking somewhere else.”

“Do they even have the holoscreen consoles here?”

“As far as I can remember, yeah. But I can’t remember much.” A pause. “Do you really think Ren’s old enough to be messing around with welding irons? They’re so heavy, and he’s so small, and—”

“And half Altean, sweetheart. You remember the bruise he left on your knee when you were playing soldiers with him. He’s strong. And you’ll be good at teaching him, too.”

“...Do you really think so? I’ve never even touched one, what if I don’t learn well enough and then he—”

“He belongs to the most devoted father on this side of the universe,” said the first voice, deep and gentle and warm like a cup of tea on a winter evening. “You would rather cut your good arm off than let him get hurt, I know that much. I’ve never worried for him when he was with you, not once. All right?”

“Okay. Okay, let’s get it.”

There were a few more words in a lilting language Adam did not recognize, not quite the dialect Allura spoke yet not quite different either, and then the first of the two speakers laughed and stepped forward into his line of sight. He was an Altean hybrid, with bright blue eyes and blue sclerae so pale they were almost white, and as Adam watched he turned and blew a kiss to the person still standing eight or nine feet behind Adam’s plastic bench. 

“I love you too, my _ameenah._ ” chuckled the second man, rustling what sounded like an armful of paper shopping bags. “I love you too.”

He had heard those words so often from someone who sounded just like that, Adam thought, if that someone were smaller and twenty years younger and still so short that Matt nearly came up to his ears.

And then the broad-shouldered figure came into the light from the nearest window, and Adam’s heart skipped a beat. 

_“Takashi?_ ”

The man froze and swiveled around to face him, and he realized with a jolt that he had been right. Those were Takashi’s eyes, and Sonia’s—grey like a plain of stormy waters, with thick blunt lashes and the faintest hint of a crease on the right eyelid. But there was no scar, no hint of white in his long dark hair, and as Adam sat gaping like a startled frog the other man’s face lit up in recognition. 

“You’re Adam, aren’t you? Shiro’s Adam?”

“Yes, but who—who are _you?_ ” Adam clutched the sides of his seat as the doppelganger drew closer, wishing more than anything that he were safe at home in his bed. “You’re not Takashi. Unless you are? Is this an alternate reality? I’ve never jumped _realities_ before, how am I going to get _back_ —”

“I mean, it could be?” said the Takashi lookalike, dropping his bags and squinting at Adam’s left ring finger. “I doubt that you’d have the same engagement ring in an alternate reality, though. My team met one of Shiro’s alternate selves once, and the two of them were nothing alike.”

Adam blinked. “Have we met?”

“Not...exactly?” ventured the doppelganger. “It’s kind of a long story.”

* * *

“So let me get this straight. _You_ were the one Takashi’s body originally belonged to? One of the clones?”

“The only one,” corrected the other man. “The rest were just...bodies, I guess. The one your Shiro has now is the only one that got activated.”

“Then how did you get this one?” Adam wondered. “This one doesn’t have a scar, or white hair.”

“One of Haggar’s experimental prototypes, according to my husband. My body wasn’t dead when Keith cut off my arm and forced me out of it, so I just ended up in the closest empty one from the cloning facility.”

“ _The closest empty one?_ ” Adam’s stomach turned at the thought. “Oh, God—”

“It’s okay!” the doppelganger assured him. “Really, it is. I don’t remember much of it, anyway, since the witch’s implanted memories from your Shiro started fading when I got this body. She didn’t tamper with it beforehand, so I was able to just...be, without interference. Everything from your Shiro’s life just seems like a dream now, but I do remember you, vaguely. You two were going to get married, right?”

“We are now,” said Adam, dazedly lifting his hand again. “But how on Earth did you get out of there? You must have been alone, and that moon was blown to pieces when Haggar’s virus took over, so—”

“My pod took me to the closest habitable system, and then I just lived with the locals for the next nine decaphoebs. I worked as a medic there, and then as the captain of a trading vessel, until….” He blushed. “Until Sariel came along, that is. I couldn’t stay on Arus after I’d met him.”

“Your husband?”

“Yeah, he’s...amazing. Lovelier than an Arusian lightning storm, and twice as fierce. He challenged me to a duel the first night we met and beat me into the ground in three seconds.” The blush went five shades darker, and Adam felt his own lips curl up in a grin. “I didn’t even know people still _did_ duels. And it took another two decaphoebs for me to realize that was supposed to be a courting gesture, but he still stayed, and when I asked him to marry me—”

He trailed off and pouted like an injured puppy at the sight of Adam’s face, crossing his arms over his chest as the older man burst into laughter. “Don’t! I bet it was just as bad for your Shiro when he met you. Don’t laugh.”

“Sorry, sorry!” snorted Adam, covering his mouth. “You’re a lot like him, you know. He gets embarrassed ridiculously easily, too.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, he does. We’ve been together twenty-four years, and he still reacts just like that whenever I tease him.”

“Sariel won’t stop making fun of me, either,” said the doppelganger gloomily. “I guess our genes have a type. And Ren likes to tease me, too.”

“Earlier, when you were talking to your husband—Ren, he’s your—?”

“Son, yeah. It’s his fifth birthday next week, and he wants a welding set. I’ve been terrified about giving it to him, but I also never learned how to say no, so here I am looking for one.”

“It’s a beautiful name,” smiled Adam, who had heard it time and again in the months before Himeko and the twins were born. “Takashi picked hundreds of names for me to choose from for each of our girls, but there was only one he ever wanted for a boy.”

“Do you think he’ll mind? That I took it? I—I remembered he wanted Ren for a son, and Himeko for a daughter, so when Ren came along I thought—”

“I think he’ll be glad, if I remember this and tell him,” Adam promised. “We have our hands full with our daughters, so there’s absolutely no chance of us having a son. That, and we’re way too busy with the twins to handle a baby now. There’s a reason they’re the youngest.”

He paused. 

“Do you remember why Takashi liked that name so much?”

“Because lilies have their roots in the mud,” whispered the other man. “In the cold, in silence and darkness, and they rise to become the most beautiful flowers God ever gave to the world. I couldn’t forget what that meant to him—to _me,_ all those years I spent alone. They were good to me on Arus, but I was still lost, in a way. I didn’t want the only home I remembered, and I didn’t want the one I had, but when Sariel came it was like the universe was blossoming in front of me. And then we had Ren, and everything fell into place. 

“I couldn’t have asked for anything more, ever, except—is he angry with me? I replaced him, made everyone stop searching for him, and I, I stole everything he had—”

“You did no such thing,” said Adam, gripping him by the shoulders. “You aren’t a _copy_ of Takashi, or a clone, or anything but yourself. You have the same face, and the same blood but I—I have a pair of twin daughters, and they’re as different as two people can be, so I _know_. He’s Takashi, and you’re—”

“Ryou,” came the answer, so softly that Adam could scarcely hear it. “Shirogane Ryou. I took our— _his_ father’s name, would he—”

“I think he’d be glad. It suits you, perfectly.”

“I remember him,” said Ryou, breathing deeply as if a weight had been lifted from his chest. “I wanted to keep him with me, and our mother. I felt like they were mine too, even if they aren’t, really. And Shiro. It meant something, knowing that I had a brother out there somewhere. Like I wasn’t alone, and that he might want to find me if he ever found out I existed.”

“You have four nieces, too,” Adam offered, feeling his own heart ache as a tear slipped down his brother-in-law’s cheek. “One of them looks just like you. Her name’s Himeko.”

“After _okaa-san_ ,” Ryou wept, letting his head fall against Adam’s arm. “Do you think I could meet them? Someday?”

“I’ll make it happen. I will, Ryou. I swear it.”

* * *

“Takashi, love?”

“What is it, sunshine?”

“I know this is going to sound crazy, but, uh...you have a twin brother.”

“... _What?_ ”

* * *

“Sonia! _Soniye_ , come downstairs, your tou-chan’s—no, he just fainted. Again. Get some cold water?”

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> come say hi on tumblr/twitter at @datboicomehere!!!


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